FWIW, I don’t think you should boot a priest because he broke the celibacy vow. But I don’t know the canon law on this.
He wasn’t “booted,” he resigned, without even waiting to hear from Rome if his resignation was accepted.
And to be clear the issue here isn’t merely that he “broke the celibacy vow” (actually a promise, not a vow). Because he did quite a bit worse than that.
He dishonored a married woman and shamed a married man and broke up their family (yes, it takes two to tango, etc.).
He exposed the Church to considerable legal liability (yes, it takes more than two to [maybe] orchestrate a cover up, etc.).
He admits this was “going back some years,” during much of which time he presumably celebrated thousands of Sacraments unworthily, a casual and repeated act of sacrilege (to which we are, apparently, mostly indifferent – making all of our complaints about divorcees unworthily receiving the Eucharist seem so hollow – and just in time for a Synod that everyone thinks, possibly wrongly, will change all that).
He trespassed against marriage at a time when Catholic understanding of it is already at its weakest, and so contributed to the widespread public impression that Catholics are liars and hypocrites when it comes to sexual morality (an impression reinforced by the tepid response of faithful Catholics to this objective outrage), as well as to the impression that your family is not safe in the company of clerics, as if the Church weren’t already alienating enough for men.
By his own admission he excused his guilt by not giving homilies on sexual morality, effectively sinning against his own episcopal commission to transmit the Catholic faith without adulteration and in its entirety (but of course “I don’t think it got in the way of my job” he says, which leads one to wonder what exactly he thought his job was).
He did this with at least two women, that we know of, and resigned only to head off scandal, with a terse and perfunctory press release and no concrete expression of repentance or contrition. (For heaven’s sake it reads like a PR from a politician about to check himself into rehab!) It is not even clear he has or will discontinue these relationships.
This is an outrage in a national church already besieged with scandal, which will drive souls out or keep souls from holy mother Church – and he has the temerity to say he wasn’t a bad bishop! And he goes off into early retirement assured of the prayers of the faithful while at least one family and potentially millions of souls are ruined in his wake and totally forgotten about. The whole thing is just sickening, from start to finish.
